NEW DELHI, July 21: India may miss its investment target in railways, ports and roads during the five-year plan period that started in 2007, Mr Gajendra Haldea, an adviser to the country’s Planning Commission said.
The country’s railways may miss investment target by 23 per cent and ports may miss it by 53 per cent in the 2007-12 plan period, while it may take more than two years for the government to meet its 20 kilometres per day road construction target, Mr Haldea told Reuters in an interview.
There have been serious shortfalls in ports but most of the shortfalls have been in central government-owned ports. They could not succeed in attracting the private investment that they had set out to achieve, Mr Haldea said.
India hopes to spend $500 billion in building up its infrastructure between 2007-08 and 2011-12, to help propel Asia’s third largest economy’s growth to double digits.
But the country has consistently missed out on its targets to build roads, ports and power plants, and experts say the poor infrastructure shaves off up to 2 percentage points from its annual growth.
India will take at least another two years to meet its road construction target as its highway authority had not awarded enough contracts in the past three years, Mr Haldea said.